The first time I experienced Wilkie Collins’s masterpiece two years ago (gushing positive thoughts here), it was via an amateur audiobook recording at Librivox and it took me more than a month. I loved the unknown suspense as I tried to anticipate what was coming, I loved the plot, I loved the well developed characters, and the recording was very well done, especially considering it was amateurs.

On this reread, I started it at a similar leisurely pace but then I could not put it down and I read the last three hundred pages in one day (I love leisurely weekends!). I felt compelled to keep turning pages because, let’s face it, The Woman in White (published 1859) has wonderful pacing, a great plot, and characters that one can’t help but love (and love to hate). Because I already had read this book before, I knew what was coming. I did not wonder about the mysteries as I read this time. Rereading it was delightful because I could see even better how Wilkie Collins managed to accomplish his purposes. Although this read didn’t have the element of the unknown, it did have the familiarity of the characters

Because I am a huge fan of rereading, I do want to note here that on this particular reread I came to better appreciate the non-spoiler crowd out there. Because I knew what was coming, the book didn’t have the emotional surprise that it had on my first read. I couldn’t put it down because I did know the twists and surprises that were coming and I wanted to read until That Part time and again, but at the same time, I already knew it. It was no longer a surprise. If there is a book I wish I could read again for the first time (this week’s Top Ten Tuesday question) , The Woman in White would have to be it.

The fall season is perfect for reading The Woman in White because the book has graveyard scenes, scenes on misty London roads, and mysterious secrets to discover.

If you haven’t read it yet, I am very jealous. Enjoy!

Yesterday evening I returned home from my classics book club meeting very sad. We read Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, and when I last read it, I remember wishing I could read and discuss with other classics readers. My classics reading group (last year, a total of four of us) agreed to give it a try this year.

Alas, the people in my group, different people from those who gave input on this years’ books, were nothing but scathing in their thoughts of Mrs Dalloway. It was too much work, there were no chapters, nothing happened, the characters were flat and boring (!). In short, they got nothing out of it.

I can relate to that feeling. I recently read The Red Badge of Courage and felt only joy when it ended because I was not enjoying it at all. But this was particularly hard since I so enjoyed my reread.

This post contains thematic spoilers for Mrs Dalloway.

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From the moment he awakens in the morning, Raisin’s best friends are by his side.

They live in Busytown, which is sometimes directly above our house and other times underground, where it snows in April. Goldbug is his best friend (sometimes he is Raisin’s brother), with Huckle, Sally, and Hilda Hippo frequently joining the two of them for birthday parties, and games of “Go Fish.”

I remember loving Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things that Go as a child, and Raisin takes after me. Ever since I got the book for him for his second birthday, Raisin’s enjoyed looking for little Goldbug on every page.  The story is a long one, so we don’t always read every page. Because each page is independent of the page before it, it’s easy to skip pages without a discerning toddler or preschooler getting upset. We both love finding the silly things, like the pencil car and a ketchup truck .  We tut-tut Dingo Dog’s crazy driving, and wonder will Officer Flossy will ever catch up to him?

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Given the two feet of snow that fell on my community yesterday, I feel it’s appropriate to focus on some of the snowy day books my son and I have enjoyed lately.  Raisin loves snow and especially snowmen, so I searched out some potential favorites even before this week’s storm hit.

In addition to those I mention below, I’ve reviewed a few other wonderful snow books in the past. (Links to my previously shared thoughts.)  The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats is a perennial favorite, and I keep returning to The Snow Day by Komako Sakai, which I relate to as a mother, since it’s about a child and mother watching the snow fall from inside the house. Last winter, I also discussed Owl Moon by Jane Yolen, illustrated by John Schoenherr; The Big Snow by Berta and Elmer Hader; White Snow, Bright Snow by Alvin Tresselt; and Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin. Raisin and I haven’t revisited any of those again this year, but maybe we will in the future. Continue reading »

Yesterday you were divorced. Today I am a widow. (page 1)

So begins So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba (first published 1980, translated from the French by Modupé Bodé-Thomas), the personal (fictional) diary of the Senegalese woman Ramatoulaye, written as an extended letter to her best friend Aissatou, who has long lived in the United States.

Mariama Ba writes of the conflicts these women face in their modern (1970s and 1980s) world with detail, passion, understanding, and sensitivity. In an expert way, she doesn’t judge the choices her fictional characters make. Nevertheless, the outcomes, both negative and positive, are evident in the women’s realistic responses to their situations.

Obviously, I have never been a woman in Senegal forced to live in a polygamous situation. I have never had to face the difficult questions of parenting and motherhood that Ramatoulaye faces. I have never been betrayed by my husband or felt direly alone in the world. Yet, I related to Ramatoulaye’s pain, her quandary, and her desire for something better. In some ways, Ramatoulaye is every woman. I loved reading her story. I feel I know her, even after 90 pages.

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Given my recent emphasis on Victorian Literature, I don’t think it would surprise you to know I’ve enjoyed all the Charles Dickens novels I’ve read thus far. A Christmas Carol (discussed here) is one I have read regularly during the holidays since I was a teenager, and while I didn’t love the other Christmas novellas, my recent readings of Oliver Twist and A Tale of Two Cities were both enjoyable experiences, although the later was not a favorite.

But from the very beginning, when a young boy in a graveyard meets a stranger in irons one Christmas Eve, I was hooked on Great Expectations (first published 1860-1861). From that first scene, it began to be a new favorite novel. I found that I wanted to read slower so the unfolding story would be prolonged and thus the intense enjoyment of the unknown would be extended. That didn’t quite happen: I couldn’t wait to keep reading and I read the book quickly. Continue reading »

Note: This post may contain spoilers for Wives and Daughters, Agnes Grey, and Middlemarch.

Although the three Victorian novels by women that I read this summer all dealt with Victorian women’s limits in society, each captured distinct roles of women in society in radically different ways. The titles reveal the depth of each novel. Agnes Grey (by Anne Bronte, 1847) is about one woman’s experience. It is told in the first person and Agnes’s naïve view of her situation and her relationships at times becomes wearisome (despite the fact that the novel is quite short). Wives and Daughters (by Elizabeth Gaskell, 1864-1866) focuses on the many different relationships a woman develops with those around her: mother to daughter, daughter to mother, daughter to father, sister to sister, wife to husband, and so forth. Middlemarch (by George Eliot, 1871-1872), by far the superior novel of the three, was simply delicious in its writing and in its depth of the relationships explored in a medium-sized community, the fictional Middlemarch. Continue reading »

Please note: This post may contain “spoilers,” particularly for Huckleberry Finn.

Rereading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (written 1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (written 1876-1885) as an adult reminds me just why I love Huckleberry Finn so much more. Tom Sawyer is a book I have always had fond memories of because of the clever adventures, the old American frontier setting on the near-to-me Mississippi River, and the creative personality of the rascal Tom Sawyer himself. But the satiric look at society in the companion novel, Huckleberry Finn, and the depth of inner conflict that Huck struggles with in that novel makes it a far more satisfying read as a whole. Continue reading »

“Crime and Punishment,” says Richard Pevear in his introduction, “is a highly unusual mystery novel: the most mystified character in it is the murderer himself.”

At first glance, there is no mystery. The answers to “who, what, when, and where” seem self-evident, especially since the murder occurs center stage in the first 80 pages of the novel. Yet the “why” behind Raskolnikov’s crime arrests attention, and the mystery is determining exactly what is the “punishment” of the title. From the beginning section to the epilogue, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s psychological novel captures a disturbed mind in turmoil from its own philosophic ideals. Raskolnikov’s expectations for himself as a “Napoleon” above the law are distorted by his own inner turmoil, and his “punishment” may be realizing his place as a human in the midst of humanity.

But I say “at first glance.” The best facet of Crime and Punishment is its depth. An abundance of characters, some stereotyped and some individual, and layers of complexities of situation and personality illustrate just how each one of us has both a “devil” and a “saint” inside us.

As the Penguin Reading Guide asks, “Who among us is not a criminal? Who among us has not attempted to impose his or her will on the natural order?” I love Crime and Punishment because of the universality of that concept. The concepts do not seem specifically Russian or nineteenth century. Instead, it is universal in its look at human nature, and human nature has not changed much in the past 150 years, although the specific settings vary.

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My interest in rereading East of Eden by John Steinbeck was purely personal: reading it the first time was what prompted me to start a book blog in the first place. I enjoyed my reread, mostly because Steinbeck’s writing is so incredible. The themes of good versus evil in human nature still felt universal to me, although I wasn’t as perfectly satisfied on this reread as I was the first time I visited it. East of Eden is a book I’d like to keep rereading at various points in my life. Continue reading »